Cycling: Murray fighting fit for time trials

By Graham Snowdon

8:15PM GMT 15 Feb 2001

THIS weekend sees the start of a new season of competition on the road in the North, with the first time trials of the year taking place on Yorkshire courses.

The bunched road racing programme gets under way a week later with the Clayton Velo Spring Classic in Lancashire. Knaresborough RT promote their Circuit of Thornton Bridge time trial over two laps of a nine-mile course near Boroughbridge tomorrow.

Keith Murray, who finished second overall in the North Eastern CCA cyclo-cross league recently, reverts to his preferred discipline and will be hoping to carry his winter fitness through into the start of a new time trial season. Murray is the fastest rider on paper, and Joel Wainman and Michael Hope will be the main challengers.

A new event on the calendar on Sunday is the Allsports International open time trial over two laps of a sporting circuit between Walkington, High Hunsley and Little Weighton, in the Yorkshire Wolds north of Hull.

"The course is undulating rather than hilly, but should provide a good early-season test," said the organiser Derek Roe.

Murray is again the top seed for the Stewart Whaey Memorial Trophy and should, barring mishaps, open his season with a weekend double.

"Last year, the all-rounder competition was close enough to say that it could have gone either way," Dawson said.

"If I had chosen my races things might have been different, but I made some wrong decisions towards the end of the season which left me needing a better 100-mile time."

With Hutchinson not defending his national 12-hour title, Dawson will be hoping to score his first win in that event, in Yorkshire on Aug 5, after finishing runner-up in 1996 and 1999.

In bunched racing, Dawson also took the silver medal in the 1999 British open road championship, and he is scheduled to have his first outing of the season in the Eddie Soens Memorial handicap race at Aintree on March 3.